As the season changes with falling leaves, colder days, and pumpkins all around, I love to lean into the fun with Halloween activities that meet my students’ with vision impairments, including complex needs, learning objectives.
- “Witch’s Brew” water beads: Fill a bin with squishy, slippery water beads in Halloween colors like black, purple, and green. Add plastic spiders, eyeballs, and cauldrons for a fun brewing potion game. Put light up plastic ice cubes and balls to illuminate the brew.
- Cooked “slimy worms” spaghetti: Dye cooked and cooled spaghetti with green or black food coloring and add it to a bin. Kids can dig through the slimy “worms” to find other small Halloween toys.
- “Pumpkin guts” exploration: For a natural sensory experience, scoop the seeds and pulp out of a pumpkin and let kids explore the slimy texture on a tray. If your student is hesitant of textures, start small by touching the outside of the pumpkin, put a little scoop on the tray and put one unwashed seed alone to touch.
- “Creepy crawly” bin: Fill a container with decaf coffee grounds or black beans to mimic dirt. Hide toy insects, skeletons, and other creepy crawlies for kids to dig up.
- Ghostly pom-pom balls with bats: Place Halloween colored pom poms it in a bin with black, bat-shaped pom-poms. The pom-pom bats are easily made with textured cardstock and hot-glued to the black pom. Add scoops and tongs to encourage fine motor skills as kids find the hidden bats. This YouTube video shows how to even make a pom-pom but I just use ready made pom-poms.
- Lava bottles: Create your own lava bottles together with oil, water, orange/purple/green food dye, and large sparkles and put them on a light box activity center. Directions for lava lamps
- 3 ingredient slime: Slime is a fun way to expose students to different textures. I like to put objects in the slime for surprises. If your student is resistant to touching or often puts items in their mouth, put it in a large ziplock bag and place on their tray. Directions for 3 ingredient slime
- Cotton ball ghosts: Glue cotton balls on a cut out cardstock ghost or use puffy paint for the outline of the ghost. Free printable ghost
- Foam pumpkins: Pictured below is an idea a family made with foam pumpkins from the Dollar Store. The pumpkins were cut in half. Since they are hollow inside, you can make them into a fall scene using clay to make smaller pumpkins, a witch, a fall tree…let your imaginations go wild.
More ideas
- The Leaf Man Sensory Story: This leaf man sensory story includes sounds that can be used with switches to experience auditory input.
- Braille design of a Halloween witch: Get the directions to make this witch with your students.
- Creating a tactile book for Halloween: Use this candy corn book idea to inspire your own Halloween tactile book.
